The 6th Gulf International Fair kicked off on Sept. 13 at the Dhahran International Exhibition Center and runs through this evening. The event, nicknamed G-XPO 2003, features goods from over a dozen nations. The most common items on sale are jewelry, clothing, kitchenware, foodstuffs, home decorations, carpets, paintings, and furniture. Contacted by disgruntled exhibitors at G-XPO, Arab News went out to the venue on Tuesday evening.
Despite arriving at the event after 7 p.m., there were no crowds. In some areas of the exhibition hall very few shoppers were even browsing the stalls. Those exhibitors offering carpets and inlaid furniture seemed to be doing especially poorly. The stalls spotlighting salesmen demonstrating kitchen equipment attracted the most attention. The novelty of watching men chopping, shredding, sweeping and vacuuming was irresistible.
Despite the fact that no customers were examining his wares, Mohsin El-Ashal, the manager of a stall selling inlaid mother-of-pearl furniture from Egypt, thought the exhibition had been good. The manager of a nearby furniture stall interrupted our conversation to ask him, “Why are you lying? Business here has only been sort of good!” El-Ashal shrugged off his colleague’s remarks and continued his commentary.
“This is my 10th year coming to this show and I hope business will pick up on the weekend,” he said. “Saudis prefer to buy entire matched sets of furniture for their salons and I have that available. If on the last day I still have too much left unsold, it will not be a problem. I will just put it in storage and take it to the next exhibition. If I have a limited quantity left, I may sell it as one lot, at a low price, to a local distributor.”
El-Ashal has found the Saudi market challenging because Saudi women are better informed about home furnishings, than other Arab women. He believed that this is because they travel abroad frequently. He added that Saudi women ask many questions before they buy anything, but fortunately in the end many do buy, which is why he’s kept coming to the show.
Mohammed Ali Al-Shami, the only exhibitor from Yemen, has bought space twice at G-XPO. The event has always been profitable for him, mostly because the goods he’s selling are unique. Al-Shami has five shops in Yemen, specializing in the buying and selling of antique daggers and jewelry.
“Saudis buy my necklaces made from quality stones and men of all nationalities are interested in my daggers,” said Al-Shami. “Some of the daggers and silver jewelry I’ve brought are more than 150 years old. We buy them from the tribes people in our area.”
When asked about his prices he laughed and said, “The truth is that at this exhibition my prices are lower than what I’d charge in Sanaa. We sell to a lot of tourists in Sanaa who have the cash in hand and they want to spend it. At this exhibition I know that I have to sell lower than the prices in the Alkhobar shops or people won’t buy.”
After hearing from exhibitors who were pleased with G-XPO, it was time to listen to those who looked morose. Jihad Kabbani of the Key Orient Factory, Syria, was grim faced as he went about arranging the ladies’ jalabyas hanging on the sides of his stall.
“It’s not good here for us at all,” he said in a clipped voice. “We are unhappy with the timing of the event. School has just started. Compared with previous years, there are few visitors. The mornings are empty. No one is buying.”
Key Orient sews jalabyas for export. According to Kabbani, their handmade garments are too expensive for the Syrian market where most people only want ready-made goods. The company has a distributor in Jeddah and Kabbani claims sales of their dresses in the Western Province remain stable. He wished he could find a distributor for other areas of the Kingdom so the company could quit coming to expos. He advised G-XPO’s organizers that they must promote their events more effectively. They also should schedule the shows better and perhaps cut back on the number of small shows, holding only larger, more attractive exhibitions.
Mohammed Saleem from Kerala, India agreed. His stall, piled high with carpets from Afghanistan, was doing very poorly despite the fact that he’d brought goods new to the market.
“We have traditional carpets from northern Afghanistan and we also have new carpets from Kabul. The wool carpets from Kabul are dyed with walnut dye and are attractive and unusual. But no one is buying,” he said sadly. “I think a big part of the problem is that very few expats have come to the exhibition this year. I was here two years ago and our sales were good. Not many Saudis buy these carpets because they cost from SR200-SR3,000 and Saudis want something cheaper. I want to point out to people that these carpets are made by individual families in Afghanistan. Arabs always say that they want to support Afghanistan, well purchasing an Afghani carpet is a good way to do that.”
As the carpet sellers appeared to be having the worst experience by far at G-XPO, it seemed important to find out why. Mohammed Shaban Abdul Haleem Mattar, manager, Isfahan Carpets, Alkhobar, was more than willing to explain the situation.
“Even though we have participated in the past, our company didn’t go to G-XPO this year because business all over the Eastern region is down right now. Everyone involved in retail sales is complaining. As for the carpet business, many Western expatriates left over the last year and they haven’t returned yet. Expats are the biggest customers for us, so we are suffering. Our business is almost 50 percent down this year compared to last. We hope that we will see a pick up in coming weeks when most westerners would have returned from vacation,” commented Mattar.
“We feel sorry for the exhibitors, but they should have done their research,” he continued. “Expos are commonplace all over the Kingdom now. It used to be that at an expo people could get the latest merchandise much cheaper than at shops in town, but not any more. The exhibitors have costs, and those costs have gone up like everything else. The fees for renting space at an expo are high, too, and the selling period there is short. We used to spend SR25,000 for our space for one week. We had to sell a lot of carpets to make that gamble worthwhile. For the owners of the expo halls it’s a winning situation. They collect the fees in advance. The risk is not theirs. They should wake up though and realize that soon it will be harder to get exhibitors if the sales and attendance at events are poor.”
- Arab News Features 19 September 2003
